LAT's 'Mapping LA' is up: Arts District is off the grid.

Mapping L.A.: The Los Angeles Times has their anticipated neighborhood mapping project now online. Under the coordination of Times Database Editor Doug Smith, one purpose of the initiative is to gather border intelligence from locals to create a guide for journalists covering LA's neighborhoods (sorely needed as veterans are laid off in droves).

The online experiment promises to get a lot of links, hits, and hours of head shaking by Brady Westwater.

In
the meantime, what's been done is a good start. In time, it will become an "electronic
entryway to detailed neighborhood
information -- crime statistics, census information, economic data and
links to Times stories." You can explore your neighborhood––and even
change the border on an interactive map. The very early morning launch opens with articles and
columns offering a POV.

Around Joel Bloom Square: Downtown will be is easy
to refer to in stories, according to the map. Just clump together
"Bunker Hill, Civic Center, Little Tokyo, Old Bank District" and use
lowercase for the fashion district, industrial district, jewelry
district, skid row, and the toy district and you got Downtown. There .
. . all done.

Wait! There's no Arts District on that list? Bring out the lit torches and barking dogs. A neighborhood has gone missing!

That
little corner of Downtown has borders recognized by a BID, a
neighborhood council, art comittee LADAD, and a community group
(LARABA) that still has members aboard who helped in naming the
district. The City of LA followed along. Even the Metro Gold Line Station will be named Little Tokyo / Arts District Station. How often do they all agree on anything?

Then there's South Los Angeles, the new name for South Central as dubbed by City Hall a few years ago. The LAT splits it into South Los Angeles and Historical South-Central.

Rebranding Silver Lake as Eastside -- the "Eastside 'hood" as one website described it -- makes it sound edgy and thrillingly louche.
But it's a Westsider's version of the Eastside, hip but not too scary.
It makes it an ideal hangout for the hesitantly adventuresome who only
dare go downtown with their hearts in their throats and their wallets
in their socks. They can congratulate themselves on hanging out in this
cool Eastside, never imagining that there's a real Eastside off to the,
um, east.

Not every place in L.A. can be the Westside. And not
every place can be the Eastside either. Once you call Silver Lake the
Eastside, you cheat the real Eastside of its name and its character.
You nullify Evergreen Cemetery, the Mariachi Plaza bandstand, the Breed
Street Synagogue and all that history and future.

Can we give Silver Lake some other hipster geo-designation. The Leastside? The Feastside?

Just call it HipSide, I say, and let's move on.

As for the Arts District; it clearly needs to be placed on the list of Downtown's communities. And use upper case. You don't want the ghost of Joel Bloom to make a visit to the city desk.